East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM - Universität Tübingen)

When Health was Freed from Fate: Some Thoughts on the Liberating Potential of Early Chinese Medicin

Unschuld, Paul U.

When Health was Freed from Fate: Some Thoughts on the Liberating Potential of Early Chinese Medicine 

Art, Anatomy and Eroticism: The Human Body in Japanese Illustrated Books of the Edo Period, 1615-186

Tinios, Ellis

Art, Anatomy and Eroticism: The Human Body in Japanese Illustrated Books of the Edo Period, 1615-1868

Reich, Karin

121                                                                                               EASTM 32 (2010) 
 
121 
 
Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben, Menso Folkerts and Benno 
van Dalen (eds.), From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of 
Mathematical Ideas. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002, 470 pp. 
Karin Reich 
[Karin Reich was professor of the history of natural sciences at the University of 
Stuttgart from 1980 to 1995, and professor of mathematics and natural sciences 
at the Hamburg University from 1995 to 2007. She is now working on a book 
entitled Gauß und Russland.] 
 
This volume looks back on a long history. As early as 1983 Kurt Vogel 
published his paper ―Ein Vermessungsproblem reist von China nach 
Paris‖ (A Surveying Problem Travels from China to Paris). In this paper a 
special problem originating in China was followed travelling via India to 
the Arabic countries and at last arriving in Paris. This was an important 
example of transmission.ed. 
In 1997 eleven speakers at a conference in Oberwolfach took the first 
steps in investigating the transmission of mathematical ideas; but at that 
time there were no specialists on Indian mathematics present. In 2000, a 
further conference took place in Bellagio in Italy. The purpose of this 
meeting was ―to bring together a larger group of scholars than had been 
possible at Oberwolfach, and to focus attention on early mathematical 
works, especially these in China, India, Mesopotamia, the Arabic/Islamic 
world, and the late Middle Ages/Renaissance in Europe‖ (p. VII). Such 
cross-cultural studies were made possible only recently with the publica-
tion of numerous new primary sources ined. Chinese, Sanskrit, Arabic, 
Persian, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, French, German, and Spanish. 
The present volume presents the fruits of these efforts, including even 
more languages than those mentioned above. The printing of the volume 
therefore must have been extremely difficult, and the four editors are to 
be highly commended.  
The first article is something of an exception, being the English trans-
lation of Kurt Vogel‘s original contribution mentioned above.  
The main contents of the volume are nineteen articles by authors from 
Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, 
the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA, a truly international group, 
all of them well-known specialists. Seventeen of the articles are in English, 
two in French, and they are presented in chronological order. At the end 
of the book there is an ―Index of Proper Names‖ (pp. 455-467). In most 
cases the transmission goes from East to West, but there are also some 
cases where a transmission from West to East is documented. 
122                                                                                               EASTM 32 (2010) 
 
The first contribution is by J. Hoyrup on the transmission of the math-
ematical knowledge of late Mesopotamia and Egypt to India and China. 
He focuses on algebraic problems, problems about rectangular sides and 
areas and the summation of series. It is followed by a paper by J. L. Berg-
gren, on the different kinds of approximations of roots and π in China 
and in Western Europe. J. Sesiano treats Greek multiplication tables, 
showing that the extant Coptic tables and some late Greek tables have 
roots in antiquity. A. Bréard‘s paper is very similar to Vogel‘s above men-
tioned investigation: the ―problems of pursuit‖ have their origin in China 
and travelled via India to Europe where they arrived in the middle ages. 
K. Chemla and A. Keller compare the similarities of quadratic irrationals 
in Sanskrit (seventeenth century) and China (third century). The rule of 
three can be found in nearly all cultures; S. R. Sarma traces its transmis-
sion from China via India and the Arabic countries to Renaissance Eu-
rope. The double false position first appeared in China and can be found 
in many sources (Liu Dun). Astronomical iterative approximations in 
India and in the Arabic world are the subject of K. Plofker. J. 
P. Hogendijk dedicates his article to a special kind of proportions, the 
anthyphairetic ratio, during the Islamic epoch. U. Rebstock successfully 
attributes a special work on practical arithmetic, the Tadhkira, to the Syr-
ian mathematician Abū ‗l-Hasan. The circulation of medieval mathemat-
ics within the Muslim countries is documented by A. Djebbar. C. Bur-
nett‘s paper is the most voluminous—52 pages. He describes many only 
recently found sources that are the basis for new tables of the Indian nu-
merals according to Western forms and Eastern forms, with a third kind 
known as the Palermitan forms. The paper is accompanied by many very 
interesting plates. A special problem mentioned by Alcuin (ninth centu-
ry), the jealous husbands crossing the river, is pursued by R. Franci for 
the period of the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. T. Levy dedicates his 
investigation to the transmission of Arabic mathematics into Hebrew; the 
first Hebrew mathematical texts appeared in the twelfth century and 
transmission is documented up to the sixteenth century. The transmis-
sion of astronomical knowledge between the Islamic world and China 
during the rule of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth century is 
B. van Dalen‘s subject, focussing on a Chinese type of lunisolar calendar 
that can be traced in Iran as well as the construction of instruments and 
several textbooks by Muslim astronomers in China. M. Bagheri success-
fully attributes a treatise on the depression of the visible horizon to al-
Kashi; formerly this treatise was thought to be written by an Iranian mys-
tic. The author also presents an edition of the Arabic text together with an 
English translation (pp. 364-367). A. Volkov had the opportunity to work 
during the years 1998/1999 in Hanoi, where he discovered a Vietnamese 
mathematical text from the fifteenth century, the roots of which go back 
Reviews                                                                                                               123 
 
 
to China. A special role within this transmission is played by the hun-
dred fowls problem which can be found in many manuscripts; the article 
is followed by a Vietnamese-Chinese Glossary. Regiomontanus is the 
centre of investigation of M. Folkerts. He compares thirteen different 
kinds of problems treated by Regiomontanus in a ms at Columbia Uni-
versity, Plimpton 188, in Regiomontanus‘ autograph of De triangulis in St. 
Petersburg and in Regiomontanus‘ correspondence with Bianchini, locat-
ed in Nürnberg. Most of these problems had Italian sources and were 
treated quite frequently by other mathematicians of the fifteenth century. 
Finally, it is quite astonishing to find out that the Tabulae astronomiae pub-
lished by La Hire in 1702 and 1727 were known in India; indeed, there 
exist several Sanscrit documents dating from 1730 containing essentials 
of La Hire, as D. Pingree shows in detail. 
The present volume impressively documents the importance of the 
transmission of mathematical ideas. The Renaissance would have been 
unthinkable if the mathematical knowledge of China, India and the Mus-
lim countries had not arrived previously in Europe. And it is also a mas-
terpiece in bringing together the different cultures within mathematics. 
 
 
 


Yvonne Dold-Samplonius, Joseph W. Dauben, Menso Folkerts and Benno van Dalen (eds.), From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas

Jost, Alexander

Siebert, Martina

 Online Availability of EASTM: A Note on the Future 
 
In the near future EASTM will be also available in an online version. We 
are currently configuring an online platform for the journal using the 
open source software 'Open Journal System (OJS)', which will allow sub-
scribers of EASTM to download current issues as well as all back issues 
of the Journal. The platform will also include downloadable ver-sions of 
our predecessor Chinese Science. Issues older than two years will be Open 
Access and thus will be more easily accessible to a broader read-ership.  
The online version is intended as a complement to rather than re-
placement for the printed version. Establishing an online platform for our 
journal will provide subscribers access to all EASTM articles in one place, 
where they may carry out full-text searches for all extent publications 
and use all the further advantages offered by a PDF file. We will become 
more visible on the web, and the general public will obtain an overview 
of the range of topics covered by our journal. Moreover, authors will 
have the opportunity to supplement their articles with a wider range of 
materials, such as data tables, color photographs, and even sound files 
and videos.  
The Open Journal System offers new ways of communication and 
workflow organization for authors, editors and reviewers, such as when 
submitting articles, selecting reviewers and many other tasks. Subscribers 
will be able to contact the editors directly and change their personal or 
subscription data online.  
This new platform has been made possible by the generous support of 
the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The work is being carried out 
as a collaborative project together with the East Asia Department of the 
Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz and with the professional sup-
port of the CeDIS of the Freie Universität Berlin. We hope that we will 
soon be able to provide a very satisfying new service to our subscribers, 
authors, reviewers and editors. Further information will be provided in 
issue 33 and at the upcoming ICHSEA in Hefei.  
 
Martina Siebert  
East Asia Department  
Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin  
 
Alexander Jost  
Abteilung für Sinologie und Koreanistik  
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 
 


Online Availability of EASTM: A Note on the Future

A Philosophy of Machines and Mechanics in Seventeenth-Century China: Wang Zheng's Characterization and Justification of the Study of Machines and Mechanics in the Qiqi tushu

Kim, Yung Sik

A Philosophy of Machines and Mechanics in Seventeenth-Century China: Wang Zheng's Characterization and Justification of the Study of Machines and Mechanics in the Qiqi tushuo

Cover

East Asian 
Science, Technology, 
and Medicine 
 
Number 31 
2010 
 
A journal dedicated to the study of traditional and modern 
East Asian science, technology, and medicine. 
 
 
Editor-in-Chief 
Hans Ulrich Vogel 
Asien-Orient-Institut, 
Abteilung für Sinologie und Koreanistik, 
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen 
eastm@uni-tuebingen.de 
 
 
Editors 
Mark Elvin                                                                                      Robert Horres 
Emeritus  Fellow, St. Antony's                                         Asien-Orient-Institut 
College, Oxford                                                         Abteilung für Japanologie 
Emeritus Professor, ANU, Canberra                              Universität Tübingen 
 
 
Managing and Production Editors 
Vanessa Dahlmann and Katharina Markgraf 
Abteilung für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
 
 
English Language Editor 
John P. C. Moffett, Needham Research Institute, Cambridge (UK) 
 
 
Local Advisory Board 
Klaus J. Antoni, Abteilung für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Viktoria Eschbach-Szabo, Abteilung für Japanologie, Tübingen 
Achim Mittag, Abteilung für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
Song Moon-Ey, Abteilung für Sinologie und Koreanistik, Tübingen 
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE 
Bridie Andrews-Minehan, Department of History, Bentley College 
Francesca Bray, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh 
Christopher Cullen, Needham Research Institute and Darwin College,  
Cambridge 
Benjamin A. Elman, East Asian Studies and History, Princeton University 
Charlotte Furth, Department of History, University of Southern California,  
Los Angeles 
Hashimoto Keizō, Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University, Osaka 
Huang Yi-Long, Institute of History, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 
Jeon Sang-woon, The Korean Academy of Science and Technology, Seongnam 
Catherine Jami, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 
Yung Sik Kim, College of Humanities, Seoul National University 
Dieter Kuhn, Institut für Kulturwissenschaften Ost- und Südasiens - Sinologie, 
 Universität Würzburg 
Angela Ki Che Leung, Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy,  
Academia Sinica, Taipei 
Liu Bing, Institute of Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University, 
Beijing 
Liu Dun, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Academia Sinica, Beijing 
Morris Low, School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University 
of Queensland, Brisbane  
Georges Métailié, Centre Alexandre Koyré, CNRS-EHESS-MNHN, Paris 
Shi Yunli, Department of the History of Science and Scientific Archaeology, 
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 
Nathan Sivin, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 
C. Michele Thompson, Department of History, Southern Connecticut State 
University, New Haven 
Tsukahara Togo, History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, 
Kobe University 
Paul U. Unschuld, Horst-Götz-Stiftungsinstitut für Theorie, Geschichte und 
Ethik Chinesischer Lebenswissenschaften, Charité, Berlin 
Donald B. Wagner, Department of Asian Studies, University of Copenhagen 
Yoshida Tadashi, Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Sendai 
 
 
 
THE SCOPE OF EASTM 
Copyright  2010. EASTM (formerly Chinese Science) is published by the 
International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and 
Medicine (ISHEASTM). Numbers 1-10 (1975-92) were published irregularly under 
the editorship of Nathan Sivin (University of Pennsylvania). Numbers 11-15 (1993-
98) were issued annually at the University of California, Los Angeles, by Benjamin 
A. Elman. Beginning with Number 16 (1999), the name of the journal changed to 
East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine and is published by Hans Ulrich Vogel 
at the University of Tübingen, Germany. The publication of this periodical is 
supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). 
This journal includes studies on the science, technology, and medicine of 
traditional and contemporary East Asia. Any study based on original research 
using Chinese, Japanese, or Korean primary sources or artifacts, that elucidates the 
relationships and interactions of science, technology, and medicine with politics, 
society, economics, philosophy, culture, religion, historiography, as well as their 
disciplinary traditions, or throws light on the work of scientists, technologists, and 
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This journal is printed on acid-free paper. 
ISSN #1562-918X 


Editorial

Buell, Paul D.

116 EASTM 31 (2010) 
Mathieu Torck, Avoiding the Dire Straits: An Inquiry into Food Provisions 
and Scurvy in the Maritime and Military History of China and Wider East 
Asia. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz (East Asian Economic and Socio-
cultural Studies: East Asian Maritime History; 5), 2009, 268 pp. 
 
Paul D. Buell 
 
[Paul D. Buell is a research associate at the Horst-Görtz-Stiftungs-Institute 
Charité Medical University, Berlin, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the 
University of Washington in 1977. He is lead author with Eugene N. Anderson 
of A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as 
Seen in Hu Szu-hui's Yin-shan Cheng-yao, second revised and expanded 
edition in preparation, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010, author of The A 
to Z of the Mongol World Empire, Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2010, and 
is a collaborator in a twelve-year project to translate and annotate the Chinese 
herbal Bencao gangmu (Materia Medica, Arranged according to Drug Descrip-
tions and Technical Aspects).] 
 
In spite of a clear need, there are not many studies devoted to specific 
syndromes recognized in Chinese medicine. This is in large part due to 
the generality of much of the relevant Chinese terminology that makes 
the identification of syndromes difficult at best, and a poor fit between 
Western and Chinese categories that makes comparison almost impossi-
ble. It is also due to the fact that research on a given Chinese syndrome 
can be protracted and complex, a result of the at times highly confusing 
ways in which the source materials is organized (try reading through one 
of the more complicated monographs from a text such as the Bencao 
gangmu 本 草 綱 目 to gain a taste), and the sheer amount of important 
documentation (included printed medical texts becoming a flood in Song 
times (960-1279) that must be sifted through to validate a study. Secon-
dary scholarship is also highly limited, if existent at all, for most focuses. 
Such studies are, as a consequence, not easy and Mathieu Torck is to be 
congratulated that he has not only put together a superb and extremely 
well documented study on scurvy in East Asia, meeting any and all re-
quirements that could possibly be placed on such a study, but that he has 
done so in the wider context, a not illogical one, of the world of maritime 
history (yielding one more study that Angela Schottenhammer has been 
godmother to). He has created a work that can profitably be read by spe-
cialists in this area, as well as by researchers in Chinese medicine. 
Torck’s book is in six chapters beginning with a discussion of scurvy 
in Western history, including its biology, and introducing the subject of 
117 Reviews 
the non-Western experience with the disease, one that he shows is little 
documented. Chapter 2 then looks at scurvy in the Chinese medical lit-
erature including treatment (the surprise is the use of horse milk and 
horse brain), establishing along the way that the Chinese syndrome qing-
tui yagan 青 腿 牙 疳 is, without question, scurvy. Chapters 3 and 4 then 
focus on what is to this reviewer the real kernel of the book, the key issue 
of Chinese maritime activity and food (and water) supplies, providing a 
capsule history of China (and Japan and Korea) and activity in the seas 
off the Chinese and other East Asian coasts. What is particularly interest-
ing about these two chapters is how Torck takes what is essentially a 
minimal amount of evidence to draw major conclusions thanks to careful 
attention to a comparative approach and an excellent use of what evi-
dence there is (some of it is decisive, even when mentioned in passing). 
Next, chapter 5 deals with the introduction of Western knowledge about 
scurvy to China and the implications of this introduction, including a 
new Chinese terminology for scurvy itself. Finally, chapter 6 brings it all 
together with a well based presentation of what Torck thinks the sailors’ 
diet must have been in imperial China before the full impact of the West, 
and the implications of this for an understanding of why the Chinese, in 
spite of a genetically enhanced susceptibility to scurvy, were able to deal 
with the problem more or less successfully during a period when scurvy 
was, in many ways, the scourge of Western sailors. And, here again, the 
author offers some surprises, the potential importance of tea, when you 
cook it hot enough, as a factor in reducing the incidence of scurvy, for 
example, and the fact that while pickled vegetables may lose much or all 
of their vitamin C, particularly when dried rather than pickled, the water 
that they are pickled in may retain it and if used in food would provide a 
good source of vitamin C. But such nuggets of information only scratch 
the surface of what is a very rich study, one that is extremely well done 
and extremely well documented. 
In short, Torck has provided us with a most useful and interesting 
book, one that belongs in any library worth its salt and in private collec-
tions, and that at $72 a copy on Amazon.com (€ 46,70 from the German 
Amazon) at present his is a book that will not bankrupt us. To be sure, 
this will not be the final word on the subject, but it is unlikely that future 
studies will do much more than build on the fine foundation that Torck 
has laid down. Of particular importance for the present reviewer would 
be expanding his results to cover scurvy in still other contexts such as the 
key Mongol one, where fermented horse’s milk was also a good source of 
Vitamin C and many traditional foods may have been selected as Vitamin 
C sources, even if the basis was empirical rather than scientific. Much to 
do here, but Torck has made a wonderful beginning. 


Mathieu Torck, Avoiding the Dire Straits: An Inquiry into Food Provisions and Scurvy in the Maritime and Military History of China and Wider East Asia

Bates, Alex

 96 
REVIEWS 
 
 
Gregory Clancey, Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seis-
micity, 1868-1930. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 2006, xiii, 331 pp. 
 
Alex Bates 
 
[Alex Bates is an assistant professor of Japanese Literature and East Asian Stud-
ies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from 
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006. He is currently working on his 
first book, a study of literary representations of the Great Kantō Earthquake.] 
 
 
Earthquake Nation is an in-depth exploration of how, at least in the case of 
architecture and building, the modernization of Japan was not a simple 
technological transfer from West to East, but a specific adaptation of 
western technology to the seismicity of the Japanese archipelago. The 
need of buildings in Japan to resist earthquakes demanded both new 
knowledge beyond that developed in the west as well as a reconsidera-
tion of the old building traditions of Japanese daiku 大 工 (carpenter-
builders). In this book, Gregory Clancey traces the development of both 
architecture’s creation of new methods to resist earthquakes and the gen-
esis of the field of seismology in Japan.  
Despite the title, the emphasis in Earthquake Nation is on the techno-
logical development not the disaster. Though there is a great deal of focus 
on the Great Nobi earthquake (Nōbi daijishin 濃 尾 大 地 震) of 1891, this 
study is less about a particular earthquake than it is about the effects of 
earthquakes in general on the development of Japanese modern architec-
ture and seismology. This emphasis distances the book from the field of 
disaster studies in that it dwells not on the damage or even the political 
aftermath of a specific earthquake, but rather on how disaster shaped the 
‘technosocial’ development of Japan. As Clancey puts it, the book does 
not pursue “a political or social history of earthquakes per se, but their 
emergences as objects of Meiji period knowledge making,” in other 
words how Japanese seismicity “restructured disciplines, institutions, 
and even individual careers around itself, and sometimes set them in 
conflict” (pp. 4-5). As such, Clancey’s work has more in common with 
other studies of the Meiji period (and especially Jordan Sand’s 2003 book 
97 Reviews 
House and Home in Modern Japan)1 than with previous works in disaster 
studies. This is by no means a criticism, because this well-researched 
study moves beyond a look at an individual disaster to explain the devel-
opment of scientific thinking in late nineteenth century Japan. 
Clancey’s book begins with the story of the yatoi 雇 人 (lit. hired per-
son), the western visitors brought to Japan to teach the rising generation 
about developments in western technology. These scientists, architects 
and teachers brought not only technology, but also an ideology that saw 
western technology as the pinnacle of human development. Clancey’s 
initial focus is on the “father of modern Japanese architecture”, Josiah 
Conder (1852-1920). Conder assumed that brick and stone signified the 
apex of a teleological evolution in building and judged Japan’s reliance 
on wood as not only a serious impediment to their modernizing effort but 
a sign of a weaker (and more effeminate) civilization in contrast to a West 
that could claim the great stone ruins of Greece and Rome as its heritage. 
Conder’s prejudice at first led his Japanese students to disregard the rich 
Japanese architectural heritage in the daiku traditions and to model their 
work on the West and see its history in masonry as their own. 
Though daiku work was denigrated by the western architects and their 
pupils, there remained in greater Japan a scepticism that these new rigid 
brick structures could withstand Japan’s frequent earthquakes as well as 
Japanese wooden buildings. Some western scholars even began to pay 
attention to traditional buildings that had stood for centuries. They espe-
cially championed tall pagodas as aseismic architectural marvels, an ef-
fort vigorously challenged by the masonry-centered architectural regime. 
It was the emerging field of seismology, however, that brought the most 
damning evidence against masonry. In fact, British geologist John Milne 
(1850-1913), a founding father of the field of seismology, noticed during 
his time in Japan that gauging the power of earthquakes was more diffi-
cult because of the disparity between damage to Japanese homes and 
those in the western settlements of Yokohama. This dilemma prompted 
the invention of the seismograph and a rethinking of the suitability of 
brick and stone in Japanese buildings. 
In the midst of the debate the Great Nobi Earthquake struck. True to 
the seismologist’s claims, the brick buildings fared worse than the “tradi-
tional” wood structures, though Clancey notes that the difference was 
exaggerated. Conder retained his faith in rigid structures and masonry, 
but the disaster caused him and his students to rethink the question of 
                                                 
1 Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space 
and Bourgeois Culture 1880-1930, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University 
Press, 2003. 
98 
98 
EASTM 31 (2010) 
seismicity in Japanese architecture. In terms of popular opinion, however, 
the damage to the reputation of western building was irreparable. 
Clancey sees this shift of opinion in popular representations of the disas-
ter. Many woodblock print images emphasize the ruins of modernity, 
including brick buildings, telegraph wires, ruined bridges and derailed 
trains (despite the fact that no trains derailed in the disaster). In one strik-
ing example, Clancey analyzes the contrast between the spectacular ruins 
of the brick Nagoya Spinning Mill in the foreground and the stable Na-
goya Castle in the distance. Images such as these critiqued the runaway 
importation of western ideas and techniques characteristic of the Ro-
kumeikan (鹿 鳴 館) era, so named for the building that housed the elabo-
rate western-style parties of the time. Clancey’s argument places the sus-
picions of Japanese toward the western brick masonry work in the con-
text of rising Japanese nationalism during the “turn to Japan” in the 
1890s. 
The link between the architectural debates, the Great Nobi Earth-
quake, and nationalism is a secondary, but important, thread in the book. 
In this, Earthquake Nation complements Kenneth Pyle’s look at 1890s na-
tionalism in his 1969 book, The New Generation in Meiji Japan2 by showing 
how this rejection of British technology is in some ways anti-colonial. At 
the same time as Japanese seismologists found in their own traditional 
buildings techniques that bested British bricklaying, they also asserted 
Japanese technological prowess in their growing empire. One student of 
Milne’s, Ōmori Fusakichi 大 森 房 吉 (1868-1923), insisted that native 
structures in Taiwan required Japanese guidance to resist earthquakes 
after the 1906 earthquake there. 
The remaining third of the book deals with the aftermath of the Nobi 
Earthquake and the waning power of Japan’s image as “Earthquake Na-
tion” after the Great Kanto Earthquake (Kantō daishinsai 関 東 大 震 災) in 
1923. These chapters also give more attention to the Japanese students of 
Conder and Milne, including architects such as Itō Chūta 伊 東 忠 太 
(1867-1954), Itō Tamekichi 伊 藤 為 吉 (1864-1943), and Sano Toshikata 佐 
野 利 器 (1880-1956) and the seismologists Ōmori Fusakichi and Imamura 
Akitsune 今 村 明 恒 (1870-1948). Despite the subtitle claiming a study of 
seismicity to 1930, the book is primarily focused on the Meiji era with the 
events of the Great Kanto Earthquake serving as an epilogue. It was in 
the aftermath of this later earthquake, Clancey argues, perceptively 
though counter-intuitively, that the status of Japan as an “earthquake 
nation” was displaced by both native desire to be disassociated from the 
                                                 
2 Kenneth Pyle, The New Generation in Meiji Japan: Problems of Cultural Identity, 
1885-1895, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1969. 
99 Reviews 
weakness suggested by disaster and foreign ideas of an ahistorical Japa-
nese architectural modernism. 
Earthquake Nation is clearly the result of disciplined archival work in 
the English and Japanese language journals of the day, but does not ne-
glect the contemporary secondary scholarship on this era being done in 
Japan and throughout the world. It is a significant contribution to the 
scholarship on Meiji Japan and on Japanese architectural, technological 
and scientific history. 


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